The orphans are back with their daddies

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All my little orphaned chicks and keets have finally been reunited with their daddies. I understand that guinea roosters will help with raising the babies, but a chicken rooster? Poor Zeus (remember he got his butt kicked a while back by the other rooster, Odin) has finally found his niche! He's the "uncle rooster" now. He stays with his babies all day and lets them all sleep under him at night. How precious!

Anyway, here they are on their first day back together:



The babies were afraid to come out of the chicken run, so the daddies went in and spent the day with them. The next day, they all went out! And they've been out every day since then:















I just love that last one. All the kids (well, almost all) are lined up on that gate, like they're in school or something! LOL!

I'm just really happy that the dads are taking such good care of their babies and everyone's doing so well.

~Lannie

[Kathy]

I've never seen a rooster do that before-that's so neat!

The sun shining on the resting babies is a pretty pic but that bottom one really is the best-"Class, today we're going to study how to avoid hawks".

Thanks Lannie, you have a beautiful if somewhat unusually parented flock.

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Actually, I think he's telling them how NOT to get their clocks cleaned by an upstart rooster!

It really is so unique how he's taken over the job of mothering the chicks. If I can ever remember, I'll take my camera out when I go to lock up the coop and see if I can get a picture of him with all his babies under him. It's just unbelievable.

~Lannie

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Here's Zeus, *trying* to cover his babies. LOL! There's also a hen in that pile, although you can't see her. She's been Chicklet's target lately (Chicklet is our lone surviving rooster that hatched in March), and he drives her crazy, so she comes in the coop at night and burrows down under the pile of babies and Zeus protects her, too. It's kinda sweet.



~Lannie